April is Citizen Science Month which this year features the One Million Acts of Science Challenge, where participants from all over the world will try to make one million contributions to research projects that need their help. With thousands of citizen science projects that are active and available, things can get overwhelming. So SciStarter has taken the liberty of creating a Citizen Science Month interactive calendar with some great selections to get you started. Jump in, find a project and report your Act of Science here.
Show Kermit some love
For National Frog Month, we’ve got an irresistible collection of projects to help frogs and other amphibians. (Credit: Matthew Lancaster, public domain via Flickr Creative Commons).
April is National Frog Month, so now is the perfect time to sign up for one or more of these Kermit-approved frojects! What better way to leap into April?
Keep skies starry
A hiker takes in the Milky Way galaxy at Glacier National Park. (Credit: Glacier National Park, NPS, Jacob W. Frank, public domain via Flickr Creative Commons)
It’s Dark Sky Week so why not work to ensure that you and future generations get a chance to see star-filled skies? Sign up for these Dark Sky citizen science projects!
Keep looking up
A rainbow appears over Yellowstone Park (Credit: NPS, Neal Herbert, public domain via Flickr Creative Commons).
Celebrate Find a Rainbow Day (April 3) by looking for a rainbow. And then look somewhere over (and under) the rainbow to find clouds and other earth science data for the NASA-supported GLOBE Observer project. It’s a single app that lets you make a variety of critically important observations.
Spring is blooming
Flowers are blooming just in time for National Walk to Work Day (April 5) (Credit: US Army photo, Rachel Larue, public domain, via Flickr Creative Commons).
Walk to Work Day (April 5) isn’t complete unless you also stop and smell the flowers. That’s the perfect opportunity to report what’s blooming, check air quality, and share squirrel photos– just a few of the project offerings you’ll find at our Stop and Smell the Roses suite of projects.
Walk on the wild side
The Instant Wild project shares media from camera traps so that volunteers can alert researchers to animals captured in the photos and video (Credit: Instant Wild).
It’s the start of National Wildlife Week, and Instant Wild is one of the many citizen science projects ideal for jumping in! View videos and images from camera traps all over the world and identify what creatures appear in them. You’ll help conservation scientists working to monitor and protect species.
Help track germs
You can help doctors identify disease hotspots just by signing up for Outbreaks Near Me and reporting your health status each week (Credit: Outbreaks Near Me).
It’s Public Health Week, and there’s an easy way for you to participate: Sign up for Outbreaks Near Me and help medical researchers track infectious disease and save lives. Once a week, you’ll report how you’re feeling. The data lets doctors spot disease outbreaks soon enough to stop them from spreading.
More info and motivation
For the Citizen Science Month “One Million Acts of Science” challenge, participants from Thailand to Tucson will be contributing to research that scientists can’t do alone. Here they share their enthusiasm for the challenge for the event’s kick off video (image: Darlene Cavalier)
Check out (and share!) our one-minute One Million Acts of Science video reel!
Source : Discover Magazine